“A most valuable resource”

More than 15,000 people involved in various aspects of analytical chemistry converged on Orlando, March 11-15, for the Pittcon 2012 annual conference and exposition.
The exposition included almost 1000 exhibiting companies occupying just under 2000 booths and showcasing their latest laboratory instrumentation, equipment and services across a broad range of applications and technologies. Of those exhibitors, 191 (20 percent) were exhibiting from 28 countries outside the US, continuing the international flair that the event has developed through the years. Around 29 percent of the conferees were also from outside of the US, with 89 global countries represented.

The comprehensive Technical Program included more than 2,000 individual presentations distributed among Invited Symposia, Organized Contributed Sessions, Achievement Awards, Workshops, and Poster presentations. More than 100 invited speakers addressed topics of global interest, including alternative and sustainable energy, homeland security, food and drug safety, environmental issues, new materials development, and bioanalytical techniques. Also available were 95 short courses, while the Employment Bureau noted that over 450 interviews were arranged during the conference as well.

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By Emil W. Ciurczak

Trade show consolidation can be a good thing, at least when it gives smaller innovator companies room to grow. 

While watching recent NOVA episodes on PBS, I found myself cheering about the recovery of forests around Mt. Saint Helens following its massive eruption, and about how sustainable teak cutting was allowing rainforest growth to continue without destroying surrounding trees. It’s no surprise that these vignettes tickled my scientific interest. After all, I was an Eagle Scout, and I did teach environmental science.

However, they also reminded me of changes that have taken place at Pittcon, the nation’s largest analytical equipment exposition and conference. The form of this year’s show was notably different. There were wider pedestrian walkways, one large area in the center of the floor for posters and another for “resting” with chairs, tables, and snack centers. The numbering of aisles also started at “700,” not “100,” perhaps to make the number of aisles seem greater than actually existed.

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American Laboratory
By Robert Stevenson

For gas chromatography (GC), the big news at Pittcon 2012 was the absence of Agilent (www.agilent.com) and PerkinElmer (www.perkinelmer.com). This was a consequence of an overall downsizing caused by the “six-year effect” where the cycles of ACHEMA and Analytica coincide. Many firms are reluctant to increase promotional spending, so compromises must be made. The reduction of spending at Pittcon was evident across the board, but was particularly strong in GC. Twenty years ago, Pittcon was viewed by spectroscopists as the world’s largest meeting in separation science. Slowly at first, the focus shifted: At Pittcon 2012, spectroscopy clearly dominated the exhibition.

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American Laboratory
By Barbara Foster

Micro Raman was big news at Pittcon 2012. While the hardware has stabilized, there were intriguing new developments in the science and its applications.

Bridging the microscopy/spectroscopy chasm

Historically, atomic force microscopy (AFM) has been the gateway for Raman microscopy, but the emphasis at Pittcon was on the optical. Major manufacturers—from micro Raman industry leaders Renishaw (www.renishaw.com) and Horiba (www.horiba.com) to Bruker Optics (www.brukeroptics.com), Jasco (www.jascoinc.com), Kaiser Optical Systems (www.kosi.com), and Thermo Fisher Scientific (www.thermofisher.com)—all featured fully integrated systems, typically centered on Olympus BX research-level microscopes (www.olympusamerica.com). (WITec [www.witec.de] and CRAIC Technologies [www.microspectra.com], which follow similar formats, elected not to exhibit at Pittcon this year.)

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American Laboratory
By Jeffrey M. Perkel

This past March, some 15,754 people from 90 countries descended on Orlando, Florida, for the annual Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy (Pittcon^®) (www.pittcon.org/exhibitors/attendstats.php). As always, the conference is an opportunity for technology vendors to get face time with their customers, and for researchers to glimpse the latest and greatest those companies have to offer. This year’s Pittcon featured 948 exhibitors, from A&D Weighing to Zoex, promoting products to support a range of technologies and industries. Here, American Laboratory rounds up some of the more interesting product launches in spectroscopy and mass spectrometry.

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Spectroscopy
By Howard Mark

As usual, there was concern at the 63rd Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy (Pittcon 2012) about how well the conference is doing. Although this reviewer heard casual comments about how the show appeared smaller and the aisles less crowded, other comments by some exhibitors indicated good attendance at their booths, and “quality” leads from those attendees who stopped in.

Despite these comments, we can only go by the figures. The total cumulative attendance was 15,754 as compared to the final 2011 attendance of 17,199. A breakdown of the attendance by attendee type and a comparison with previous Pittcons can be found at: http://www.pittcon.org.

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